Les Blank

Work: The Tea Film
When: 11 am Thursday April 6 2006
Where: HCC Ybor Room
When: Noon Sunday April 9 2006
Where: HCC Ybor Room

Work: Butch Anthony
When: 11 am Thursday April 6 2006
Where: HCC Ybor Room
When: Noon Sunday April 9 2006
Where: HCC Ybor Room

Les Blank is a prize-winning independent filmmaker, best known for a series of poetic films that led Time Magazine critic Jay Cocks to write, "I can't believe that anyone interested in movies or America... could watch Blank's work without feeling they'd been granted a casual, soft-spoken revelation."

John Rockwell, writing in The New York Times, adds, "Blank is a documentarian of folk cultures who transforms anthropology into art."

And Vincent Canby, also in The Times, declared that Blank "is a master of movies about the American idiom... one of our most original filmmakers."

Born in 1935 in Tampa, Florida, Les Blank attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he received a B.A. in English literature and an M.F.A. in theater. In 1967, after two years in the Ph.D. film program at the University of Southern California, and five years of freelancing in Los Angeles, he began his first independent film on Texas blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins (The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins) and the newly forming sub-culture known as flower children, (God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance).

To finance these and other of his own films, he continued to make industrial and promotional films for such organizations as Holly Farms Poultry, Archway Cookies and the National Wildlife Federation until 1972.

Les Blank began a series of intimate glimpses into the lives and music of passionate people who live at the periphery of American society.

Major retrospectives of Les Blank's films have been mounted in Los Angeles at FILMEX in 1977; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1978 and 1984; New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1979; the National Film Theatre, London, 1982; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City, 1984; the Cinematheque Francais, Paris, 1986; the Independent Film Week, Augsburg,Germany, 1990 and the Leipzig Film Festival, 1995 and the Sofia Music Film Festival, Bulgaria, 1998.

Feature articles on Blank have appeared in American Film, Film Quarterly, Take One, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Image Magazine, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Premiere, Downbeat and Video Review.

In 1984 Blank co-edited the Burden of Dreams book, which included journals written during the making of Burden of Dreams by him, sound recordist-editor Maureen Gosling and Werner Herzog, plus an article by legendary journalist Michael Goodwin.

In 1986, National Public Radio aired a half-hour special on Les Blank's work and in 1991 CNN aired a special on him worldwide.

Among Blank's numerous awards are the British Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, 1982 (Burden of Dreams); the Golden Gate Award "Best of Festival", San Francisco Film Festival, 1982 (Burden of Dreams); Grand Prize, Melbourne Film Festival, 1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer); Special Jury Award U.S. (Sundance) Film Festival, 1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer); Grand Award, Houston Film Festival, 1983 (Burden of Dreams); Golden Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, 1969 (The Blues Accordin' To Lightnin' Hopkins); Blue Ribbon, American Film and Video Festival (Dry Wood, Hot Pepper, Always For Pleasure, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, Burden of Dreams, Gap-Toothed Women, The Best of Blank, J'ai Ete Au Bal, Yum, Yum, Yum! and Marc and Ann), "Best of Festival", Sinking Creek (Nashville) 1996 (The Maestro, King of the Cowboy Artists).

In 1990, Les Blank received the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement as an independent filmmaker.

In 1989-1990 Blank was the distinguished filmmaker-in-residence at San Diego State University and in 1991, adjunct assistant professor in film at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was also the Louis B. Mayer filmmaker-in-residence at Dartmouth College and a directing fellow at the Sundance Institute in Utah (both in 1984).

Films by Les Blank

1960	Running Around Like A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off
1964	Dizzy Gillespie
1968	God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance
1969	The Sun's Gonna Shine
1969	The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins
1969	Easy Rider (Directed by Dennis Hopper; second camera by Les Blank)
1969	The Arch (Directed by Shu Shuen; featuring Lisa Lu; edited by Les Blank)
1971	Spend It All
1971	A Well Spent Life
1971	Delusion Of The Fury: A Ritual Of Dream And Delusion (Directed by Madeline Tourtelot. Edited by Les Blank)
1973	Dry Wood
1973	Hot Pepper
1974	A Poem Is A Naked Person
1974	An Eames Celebration (featuring Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and more) directed by Perry Miller Adato, photograhed by Les Blank
1976	Chulas Fronteras (selected to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1993)
1978	Always For Pleasure
1978	Poto and Cabengo (directed by Jean Pierre Gorin; camera by Les Blank)
1979	Del Mero Corazon
1980	Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (selected to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2004)
1980	Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
1982	Burden of Dreams
1983	Sprout Wings and Fly
1984	In Heaven There Is No Beer?
1985	Cigarette Blues
1986	Huey Lewis and the News: Be-Fore!
1987	Gap-Toothed Women
1987	Ziveli!: Medicine for the Heart
1988	Ry Cooder and the Moula Banda Rhythm Aces
1989	J'ai Été Au Bal (I Went to the Dance) aired on PBS'The American Experience in an abridged version as French Dance Tonight
1990	Roots of Rhythm (with Harry Belafonte) (director and cinematographer for New York and Cuba sequences)
1990	Yum, Yum, Yum!
1991	Julie: Old Time Tales of the Blue Ridge
1991	Marc and Ann
1991	Innocents Abroad (aired on PBS' travel Series in an abridged version as The Grand Tour)
1991	Puamana
1994	My Old Fiddle: A Visit with Tommy Jarrell in the Blue Ridge
1995	Hole in the Soul (Directed by Dusan Makavejev; camera by Les Blank)
1995	The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists
1995	Sworn to the Drum: A tribute to Francisco Aguabella